Roy Kerridge wrote about parts of the British Isles which most journalists never see. In 1977 he got a job as a lavatory attendant in a town on the south coast of England, and became friends with a tramp, Commander Williams, who that winter
“was found frozen to death in a lavatory cubicle, for although the Welfare had found him a room in Portsmouth, he wouldn’t stay in it. Now the staff at the mental home could record that he had been ‘returned to the community’ for the last time.”
I begin with this anecdote not only because it is a pleasure to think of my friend Kerridge, who died in 2020 and whose obituary in The Daily Telegraph can be read here, but because the Prime Minister claimed in yesterday’s Guardian that tolerance by politicians of rough sleeping is “a philosophy that took hold in the 1980s”.
Kerridge reminds us that the doctrine of “care in the community”, the belief that it was more humane to release patients from mental hospitals and provide support outside such sometimes cruel institutions, was already well established in the 1970s, and indeed can be traced to the 1950s.
So the way in which Andy Burnham frames this debate, his eagerness to make Margaret Thatcher and her supporters the villains of the piece, is annoying.
He is nevertheless right to want to do something about homelessness. It is shameful to see the streets of our cities and towns strewn with rough sleepers.
Deep feelings of compassion are aroused, and deep feelings of anger at the feebleness of the official response.
A month ago, within an hour of becoming PM, Burnham announced his “first instruction”, namely “to end rough sleeping in our country”.
He said much the same in 2017 on becoming Mayor of Greater Manchester. Two years later, a BBC Producer, Kevin Core, spent a week with Gary, a rough sleeper in Manchester, recorded Gary’s experiences and put some of Gary’s questions to Burnham.
Earlier this month, this excellent programme was updated by Core, and broadcast on Radio 4.
Gary tells us he had “a good upbringing” but “went down the drugs route, the criminal route”, also had mental health problems, and ended up on the streets.
Here life was cold and dangerous: he had his fingers broken. But he said that if offered a bed for the night in a dormitory, shared with other men whom he didn’t know, he would always prefer the streets: “A Bed Every Night” – the name of Burnham’s programme in Manchester – “isn’t going to be right for everybody.”
In 2019, Burnham’s programme nevertheless seemed to be achieving some success, bringing the number of rough sleepers in Manchester down. But in each of the four years to the present day the numbers have once more gone up, as have the numbers at national level.
Core reminds us of the acute shortage of both private and social housing. At the start of this year, 1.3 million people were on social housing waiting lists.
We all know of people who are unable to find a place of their own, so have to go on living with family or friends. Rough sleepers are but the small tip of an enormous iceberg.
Gary makes a distinction between genuinely homeless people, and those who pose as homeless in order to engage in organised opportunist begging.
When Core asks the Mayor in 2019 whether he agrees with this, Burnham replies:
“I do, difficult as it is, because it sounds a little callous, or it can be portrayed as such, but I do agree with Gary on this.”
Seven years on from the original programme, Gary looks far better, and has moved into a one-bed flat: “Because I’m not taking the drugs I can spend money on me flat.”
He has had a great deal of help, including help with managing his money and his medication.
Many admirable, long-established charities are active in this field, and can sometimes bring to it the flexibility needed for success.
Meanwhile the state continues with the impossible task of drawing up rules to cover every case, the desperately needy along with those who are well able to fend for themselves and are likely to be held back by handouts.
At the same time, the state has suffocated house-building by imposing impossible costs and complexity via the planning system.
Twelve years ago I wrote a piece for ConHome about how Harold Macmillan fulfilled the Conservative pledge, at the general election of 1951, to build 300,000 houses a year, an astounding achievement which prepared the way for further Conservative victories in 1955 and 1959.
No party shows the slightest sign of knowing how to get so many houses built now.
It is reasonable to doubt whether Burnham will be any more successful at national level than he was in Manchester at bringing about an end to rough sleeping.
But the much more fundamental criticism of his policy on homelessness is that he has invested in it the political capital which ought to be devoted to building homes for everyone.
He is distracting us, and also himself, from the essential problem, which is that for many years we have not built nearly enough houses.